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Countdown to Doomsday

According to some, none of us will live to see next Christmas, but even experts disagree on the meaning of “the last day” mentioned in the now famous Mayan legend.

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Do all of us have less than a year to live? Will the world end next Dec 21, as a popular interpretation of a Mayan legend would have it?

The theory that Doomsday would occur just before next Christmas probably began to gain currency with its mention in The Maya, a book published in 1966 and written by Michael D Coe, an expert in Mesoamerican studies. Dec 21, 2012 is regarded as the last day of a 5,125-year cycle in the Mesoamerican long-count cosmological calendar.

However, even experts in Mayan studies are in disagreement over what “the last day” signifies. Some say it could mean the beginning of a new era instead of Doomsday.

Despite the abundant information on the subject in print and electronic media, many ordinary folk are either oblivious of the controversy or uninterested. Yet others are in a mental state that is sandwiched between denial and disbelief.

One famous personality who rejects the Doomsday theory is Billy Meier, a Swiss national who claims knowledge about the future of mankind, saying he acquires it through contact with an advanced extraterrestrial civilisation.

Michael Horn, Meier’s media representative, told FMT by email that Meier posed the question about the 2012 phenomenon to Ptaah, his main extraterrestrial contact.

The Doomsday theory is “absolutely rubbish,” Ptaah told Meier, according to Horn.

Ptaah, he said, was more interested in telling Meier “the truth about the actual depth of climatic and environmental problems” and its denial by the “endlessly greedy multinational corporations”.

Also covered in the discussion with Ptaah, according to Horn, was how “human thinking, especially the apocalyptic fearful thinking prevalent among members of various fundamentalist groups, creates and fulfils prophecies.”

Those who subscribe to the Doomsday theory have presented a number of scenarios of how the world will end, or what will happen come Dec 21.

Some say a rogue planet will crash into earth, others say solar storms will destroy our planet, and yet others say the end will come about as the result of a realignment of planets.

NASA, the American space agency, has brushed aside all these speculations and theories. NASA scientists say the rogue planet, named Niburu by its proponents, does not even exist.

Another popular theory is that there will be a north-south reversal of the earth’s magnetic field and that this will cause massive destruction and “throw civilization back into the Stone Age”, destroying all life on the planet. This, too, has been dismissed as a ridiculous speculation.

“The flip flop does not happen in an instant,” a NASA official said. “The earth’s magnetic field reverses every 200,000 to 300,000 years, though we have currently gone without a swap.”

These assurances by experts may bring relief to those who might have been awaiting Doomsday with trepidation.

However, there remains something to be fearful of. Some scientists speculate that there will be occurrences of solar flares or storms in 2012 that will aggravate global warming, and thereby speed up the rise of sea levels and other fearful phenomena associated with the heating up of our planet.

According to Horn, Ptaah mentioned this danger of solar storms to Meier in the following words: “Solar eruptions will lead to further extreme climatic changes, bringing forth droughts, bad weather, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, crop failures, great famines …. in 2012.

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